Singapore’s coffee revolution

“Everyone loves to go out drinking coffee and having brunch. Brunch is like a sport here; on a Sunday we have queues down the road.”

If this sounds familiar, it is – and it isn’t. For cafe owner Harry Grover isn’t talking about the brunching multitudes of Melbourne or Sydney. As we sit within Common Man Coffee Roasters, he’s explaining how Australia’s indie coffee scene has caught on in Singapore.

“It’s exploded here, and a lot of that came from Aussie influence,” he says. “Many of the new generation of Singaporeans have studied in Sydney or Melbourne, and they’ve come back home and thought, ‘I want to have the same quality’.”